Longdrawn, the parish-clerk; "it seems to me that these Wellands had real downright mischief an' malice in 'em, to chase, and worry, and threaten a poor fatherless and motherless orphant so. Poor lad! he was often very aggravating when he got upo' th' church after th' starlings, and loosened the tiles, but I canna help feeling for th' poor chap, now he's gone."

"Gone!" said Mrs. Widdiwicket; "and where's he gone, thinken ye?"

All shook their heads, and Roddibottom, the schoolmaster, got up and strode about the house, and then suddenly turning round, facing the company, with his hands thrust into his waistcoat pocket,—"Where's he gone? why, ma'am, why, neighbours, if they put me into the jury box. I should give my verdict that Welland knows!"

"Oh, goodness me!" exclaimed Mrs. Widdiwicket; and all the rest again shook their heads, and said, "Likely enough; that Welland is a savage un. What but a hard un could chase a poor lad so?"

"And what was he doing sitting there by the bank, and pointing to the water, and saying, 'He's there!' and that he could not have got out without him seeing him? How do we know what happened after they were out of sight? A knock on the poor lad's head with a stick or a stone, and a plunge into the dam! Eh? eh? I think that pond should be dragged." And with that Roddibottom drank off his glass of ale, and walked out with an air of inconceivable sagacity, and leaving all the company in wonder and horror.

"By leddy! what the mester says is right," said Pluckwell. "Who knows what happened? and the boy has never been seen since."

"Ay, the dam should be dragged," said Longdrawn; "there's a mystery there." And looking full of mystery himself, he followed the schoolmaster out.

The feeling at the "Dog and Partridge" was the feeling everywhere. The poor boy was invariably pitied, old Luke was pitied, poor old Beckey was pitied, and the Wellands were looked upon as most savage and bloodthirsty wretches. The excitement became great as time went on. The dam was dragged where Welland had been seen sitting, but nothing was found; search and inquiry were made after young Luke all round the country, but not a trace of him could be found. The feeling that Welland had killed the poor lad, and secreted his body somewhere in the bushes, and only pretended for a blind that he had gone into the water, became very strong. The Wellands were both taken up and tried for the murder, his wife as accessary before the fact; and he was also charged with contributing to old Luke's death, for though he had never opened his mouth after his return but in one instance, it was—"They've killed him, and they've killed me."

Doll Welland had boasted how she had thrown the old man down by putting the pole between his legs, and having sat upon him after his fall, and what more she might have done nobody could tell. Besides, both her husband and herself had vowed most bitterly, or, as the country neighbours said, "most saverly," that they would finish the lad if they caught him. And the persevering animosity with which they had contrived to hunt him up, and to hunt him down at the last, betrayed a most murderous mind and intent. Luke never turned up, and, at the March assizes at Derby, the Wellands were tried; and numbers of the Marlpool people who had quite sided with them till after the boy was missing now gave fully their evidence against them, repeating the vengeful expressions which they had used against poor Luke, and that they had said twenty times, "They'd finish him, if they ever laid hands on him." All these things, and the general feeling of the country telling against them, both husband and wife were condemned for the murder of the lad, though there was no direct evidence of the fact. Nobody would believe anything else after the fierce chase and the savage threats, and the disappearance of Luke just where Welland was found sitting. As the evidence, however, was but circumstantial, though very aggravated, the husband and wife were condemned to transportation for life, and were shipped off to Sydney, with the hearty expression of satisfaction of all Marlpool, Monnycrofts, Hillmarton Hall and hamlet, of the farmers, and all the world besides. As the Wellands had five or six children, there was a subscription in that part of the country to send them out with their convict parents, and thus to rid this happy land of the whole "seed, breed, and generation" of the bloodthirsty Wellands, according to the phraseology of the Marlpool.

Years went on: no Luke Barnicott ever re-appeared or ever was heard of; and though the body was never found—never rose to the surface of Hillmarton dam, nor was discovered in the wood—it became a settled feeling that Welland knew if he pleased to tell, where the remains could be found. But Welland and his family were broiling in the sandy fields of Paramatta, cultivating the hot ground, and planting orange and lemon orchards, which now embellish that neighbourhood, and show their dark masses covered with golden fruit in mile-long woods to the people sailing up the river past Kissing Point, and many another pleasant promontory, with their mangrove trees standing in the water, and their charming houses overlooking their rocky shores and well-kept lawns, dark and lustrous with the Indian and Moreton Bay figs, the India-rubber trees, and many a quaint Banksia and blooming shrub from sandy Botany Bay.

Years rolled on: the story of these events was forgotten everywhere except in the immediate neighbourhood, where it was getting less and less frequently adverted to. It was stereotyped in every one's mind of those of more than infantine years at that period; but it was only when some strange murder or some mysterious occurrence took place in the country at large that it was revived and talked of far around. Fifteen years had passed: poor old Beckey Barnicott was now between seventy and eighty. She was still living at the Reckoning House, but she was blind—stone blind. She lost her eyes soon after the shocking death of her husband and the loss of her grandson. It was supposed that she wept herself blind; and no doubt her grief of mind helped to produce this catastrophe. It was found that old Luke Barnicott had saved a small sum, which brought Beckey in ten pounds a year; and she had been advised by the clergyman of Monnycrofts to sink the sum in an annuity, as she had no one to succeed her, and so she had an income then of five-and-twenty pounds a year. She was well off in that respect; and she had a middle-aged woman, a widow out of the village, Amy Beckumshire, to live with her and take care of her. Tom and Peggy Smith were both dead, and the new miller, John Groats, used that part of the house to store corn in.

Poor old Beckey Barnicott used to get out into the garden by help of a long wand, with which she felt her way, and she had learned to know every part of the garden, and could feel the rosemary and lavender plants, and used to sit in the sun in the rude porch and bask herself; and when it was too hot, she took her place under a great elder tree, which hung from a high bank on the far side of the garden, where a seat was placed. There she used to knit diligently, for she could knit without her sight wonderfully; and there for many a long hour she used to think about old times, when her husband was full of health and strength, and used to keep the mill up above spinning round like a great giant, beckoning all the country round to come up and see something wonderful. And when Tom Smith and he used to read the "Nottingham Review," and all about Bonaparte, and Wellington, and Lord Nelson, and talked over the affairs of the country. And then her thoughts would turn on poor little Luke, as she called him, and her heart clung to his memory with a wonderful tenderness; for he seemed to have been misunderstood, and so cruelly used. She remembered many things that he had done for her, and how he used to bring her heaps of nuts and blackberries and mushrooms, and catch sparrows in winter to make nice dumplings, and she thought to herself, "Ay, poor